If a philosophic theory is once ruled out of court, no one can tell when it will appear again.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The state of the world, of course, is constantly changing, and so is theory.
Many studies or theories by political scientists fit some subset of cases that a court decides, but literally no theory can account for all of them, particularly when it comes to studying a complex institution like the Supreme Court.
A theory must be tempered with reality.
I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.
It is an acknowledged truth in philosophy that a just theory will always be confirmed by experiment.
One thus sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails in unbroken wholeness.
Theorists have wonderful ideas which take years and years to be verified.
Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.
A justice is not like a law professor, who might say, 'This is my theory... and this is what I'm going to be faithful to and consistent with,' and in twenty years will look back and say, 'I had a consistent theory of the First Amendment as applied to a particular area.'
No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.